


Errands

by Roca



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 11:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15629814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/pseuds/Roca
Summary: Even on the Hellmouth, you sometimes have to take care of the trivial things.





	Errands

Giles makes three stops that night.

His bank is across town, far past even the Bronze. It’s not open this late, of course, but there’s a handy ATM outside. A single thought pulses through him as he fumbles with his bank card: Jenny is coming over. He marvels at how the thought alone is enough to give him a boyish, giddy rush of excitement. 

Perhaps they’ll lean against the counter, and Jenny will give him one of her old smiles. Then she’ll declare that she’s starving, because of course she will be, and he’ll gallantly offer to telephone in some delivery. For which he will then pay, naturally. Giles decides on withdrawing forty dollars and pulls two crisp bills from the machine.

The dry cleaner’s is at the strip mall down the street. He is a regular at this point, and the young attendant is kind enough to stop closing up shop and accept a few patrol-dirtied jackets. She chit-chats idly about the most recent string of Sunnydale murders as she rings him up, and he thanks her sincerely as he departs.

Next comes the gas station, a stupid triviality. But the tank is running low, so he pulls over to the pump on his way back home. Inside, the slack-faced cashier refuses to split one of his twenties unless he buys something. He needs smaller bills to tip the delivery boy, so he buys a cheap lighter from beside the till. Giles starts his car hastily, anticipation quickening his fingers, and he curses the three tries it takes to get the engine running.

As he traverses main street, he hits three red lights.

Back home, he parks at a slight angle, distracted as  he scans the adjacent cars. His apartment’s lot is crowded, but there’s no sign of Jenny’s Volkswagen.

Still, she has somehow beaten him home: there on his door rests a sweet red rose.

 

* * *

 

Later, after, every wasted moment becomes a pall on his soul. The grief is tangible, thick in his lungs and ice in his veins, but the guilt… It is an elusive thing. It comes in waves, cresting into a helplessness that suffocates. 

When the flowers have been cleared and the bedspread driven to a far-off dumpster, Giles sits on his stoop smoking endless cigarettes. He turns the cheap lighter over in his hands as he retraces his steps to each useless, futile errand. They had all seemed so very necessary at the time.

But in the end, there was only one place he’d truly needed to be. 


End file.
